Cracked cylinder head · 11:34am Apr 17th, 2018
So I may not have lost my car. Or rather, I may not have lost it just yet, because the model is a little over twenty years old. Parts are no longer being made.
Parts are still available, of course. There's salvage yards, and eBay: I got a fresh headlight off the latter once. But 'slightly used' on a cylinder head is worrisome, and there's a chance that going deeper into the engine will uncover more problems. Right now, all I know is that the first diagnosis is in, and a replacement piece has been ordered from one state over. If it can be installed without further issue, I could be back on the road within a week and the feeling of being trapped will temporarily dissipate. Because I can reach any number of things via bus, rail, and foot travel -- while being able to carry very little back. In particular, it's somewhat harder to go food shopping when the routine becomes 'visit one market, return all packages to home, visit second market...' The miles add up fast.
I didn't ask for odds. I feel like it's fifty-fifty. Maybe it's an easy procedure, but...
...no. It isn't. I just looked it up. Just for starters, the entire engine has to be removed, and then things get delicate. It can be up to a two-day haul, and that's just for labor time involved in getting to the relevant sections. And naturally, if adjustments are necessary, the engine has to be removed again.
The car is over twenty years old, and parts are no longer being made. The time when something either irreplaceable or too expensive to bother with breaks down isn't so much visible on the horizon as plummeting from the sky while considering the exact size of its impact crater.
I'm not going shopping for a new vehicle. I can't. I have to wait for the last efforts to be made on this one, plus I don't exactly have the full payment together. And as for 'new'... yeah. 'New' is probably 'used'. I can't really think about searching for the same model again because unless you're a collector, over twenty years old is not a good thing to search for in a car. And again, long drought ahead, both searching and cash assembly. A whole lot of too-long walks and being limited in range.
This is not a request for pledges. I can cover what's being done now. If my vehicle winds up fixed, that bill can be paid. I just promised to say something about how things were going. And I've had extended periods without a vehicle before. This is one of the longer ones, and so it's been increasingly wearying.
I'm just nervous. Because it feels like there's a good chance this won't work -- and that even if it does, the inevitable next breakdown will be the one which turns the sunk cost fallacy into a bottomless money pit.
Drama-case scenario? Repair completely successful. I pay, and thus am completely broke. Pick up the car, start driving home, and the final collapse takes place about ten feet from my parking spot. Because drama. And also because car.
Cars are drama queens. You know this.
Long week ahead.
If you don't mind my asking, what kind of car is it?
4841949
Queries the mechanic among us.
...it's funny: I actually felt the defensive reluctance to provide full model details drop in. It's like a ball bearing hitting the duodenum. That instinctive privacy urge is strong...
*slow breath*
It's a Toyota Previa.
Right. My car is the Big Egg. Nature's perfect solar collector. Model (Mostly) Unstoppable. No acceleration, no cruise control (it's been broken for a long time), no dignity, and no known limit to the odometer.
(A couple of years ago, while many miles from home, I found myself next to another Previa, with both of us stopped at a red light. The driver of the other one rolled down his window and called out "How many miles?" I told him, and he just laughed, declared that I was driving a baby, and went through on green. And the number I'd given him was well into six digits. Previa owners compare mileage like golfers bragging about their drives.)
It may sound like a strange thing for me to be driving: the mpg isn't great, and I seldom need to carry multiple passengers. But at the time I was shopping, it fulfilled certain requirements. To wit, it was fairly cheap and it ran. ('Cheap and runs' was pretty much at the top of my requirement list.) It also has a surprising cargo capacity, warms up quickly in the winter (while turning into an oven within six minutes of summer sun exposure), and the only thing wrong with it was the heating coil -- which, of course, turned out to be the most expensive repair possible.
It's become progressively more injured since I acquired it. I needed a basic repair done which required going in through the dashboard and by the time that mechanic was done, the air vents could no longer be switched all the way over and one of the interior control lights was permanently out: he responded to my inquiries about fixing the damage he'd caused by going out of business. The wiper fluid tank cracked, and the wiper blades need to be replaced every six weeks or, if it actually rains, every six minutes.
But it runs. Until the moment it doesn't.
Okay, Previas are wicked awesome. We had a customer that had one with 320,000 miles or so on it before the rust finally got too bad.
That does explain why the engine has to come out. I was wondering about that.
4841953
*nods* Over my period of ownership, I've learned that Previas are a little like the original VW Beetles: each is rigged like no other car on the planet. A ridiculously complicated repair on anything else can be incredibly basic on this model -- but the versa is just about guaranteed to go vice. Just reaching the air filter can be an exercise in unintentional hilarity. I don't know who originally drew up the Previa's blueprints, but I have started to pin down exactly which drug they were on at the time.
But as you suggested, they're very hard to stop. It's a car people swear by. And at.
Also I should add, minivans rock! Car-like handling and fuel economy, truck-like hauling and towing capacity. Features no other vehicles have, like seats that come out and can be used wherever you want, or power doors. Suitable for camping in on road trips. Also experience has shown they're so common cops hardly ever notice them.
Everybody should buy a minivan.
It would be very unlikely for the repair to take two days. Pretty much any shop will have car lifts and it's not too difficult to drop the engine straight out.
It also shouldn't need to go in and out multiple times unless they really screw up the reassembly.
By the way Previas are called Taragos down under and I have to say I prefer Tarago.
4841957
The SAD shaft complicates this process somewhat.
4841957
What had me seeing red is that you got the option for the hybrid. Gas/electric minivan models are barely starting to appear in the States -- and ironically, because the universe and your browser's cookies know what's wrong with your life, I got a sidebar ad for a new model this morning.
Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price: $39,995.
So unless one of you is Jeff Bezos in disguise, no.
4841959
It does but I'd still say it's easier than extracting the engine from most of the newer cheap FWD cars.
4841960
Unfortunately not Bezos in disguise. I'm more of an Elon Musk fan.
4841951
Reminds me of my old Mitsu Lancer. Bastard managed to always stop working while at a gas station.
I currently drive a Honda Jazz, and it just barely sips fuel. I think a minivan would give me fits.
4841960
I saw a car loan offer the other day that was for a 7 year loan.
It's insane, and worse, if Musk gets his way and we all go electric the entire used car market will vanish as the usual age for the big price drops is when the Teslas and their ilk will be due for full battery replacements to the tune of a few grand.
Are you in the USA? If so I’ll find the website I use to order parts and post it when I wake up. Ordering them yourself can save hundreds to thousands as many dealers and repair places are linked to only i part place to order from.
The site, who’s name is bugged me cause I can’t remember it atm, seemed to have a fair selection of older parts.
4841969
Historically, Lancers primarily exist to give their leaders problems. (And I once had a tire blow out when I was two blocks away from a tire shop. Rim-limped to safety.)
4841972
Don't worry. I'm sure someone will declare electricity to be a socialist Soros plot.
4841976
I am, but the part was already ordered and may currently be in transit.
Okay, wow. That is an interesting car to own. I can see the appeal, but I am also a car nut that can see the appeal in just about anything with more than two wheels.
Fingers crossed that the replacement head staves off catastrophe for another 100,000 plus miles.
4841984
Then describe it to me.
4841986
Well, you said that when you bought it the main criteria it filled was “cheap and runs.” That’s always better than relying on public transport and other people.
It’s a Toyota. As much as I might decry them for being bland, I can’t say anything bad about the quality of what they build. As much as GM and Ford might beat their chest about their importance, modern Australia was built by Land Cruisers and the Hi-Lux.
Because European and American manufacturers view the Australian market as akin to something to be scrapped off their shoe, the entire minivan market here is dominated by the Tarago/Previa. Until the SUV boom of the 2000s, a generation of kids from large families knew no other way to get to and from school.
That egg shape is ‘90s cool. The world was just shaking off the boring hard-edged boxes of ‘80s design and rediscovering cars with curves. That was the first “single-box” style van that had some sense of style about it.
Okay, due to the weird layout of the engine this breakdown was difficult to diagnose and repair. But a cracked head can happen to any piston engine car, and any twenty year old car is going to be difficult to get parts for. I’ll bet that for the vast majority of those six digits of miles your Previa started on the first crank, and thoughts of being stranded were completely off your mind.
You’ve got a cool car Estee. Even Doug DeMuro thinks so.
4841986 air-conditioning, heaters, windshields, windshield wipers, the ability to hit a piece of ice without kissing the concrete at speed with five hundred pounds of steel bouncing down the street with you.
4842008
Being stranded is something I pay not to worry about. One bill I always have to scrape money for is the yearly AAA renewal -- at the Plus level. Because when the car does break down, it's pretty much guaranteed that I'll be more than ten miles from home. Getting Plus extends my covered towing range to a hundred miles, allowing me considerably more roaming. I've had extended periods without a working vehicle, but none of them began with having to find a bus or train which was going in the rough vicinity of home.
(This isn't as nightmarish as you might think. There's a major transportation hub in my area: reach it and just about any mass transit trip can be rerouted. However, I've been in situations where reaching that hub is three hours all by itself. There was also a recent nasty reminder of how bad the transfer system is: I was trying to see how I could reach an event ninety miles away via mass transit, and the shortest travel time available turned out to be four and a half hours. Each way.)
Basically, I can only rely on public transportation during daylight hours, and doing so requires some hiking at each end. And if I'm taking bus or train, I get no carrying capacity beyond 'hands'.
I will not, under pretty much any circumstances whatsoever, take a taxi. The local taxis have nearly killed me several dozen times. It's hard to justify putting them on salary for it.
4841951
My In-Laws have one of those, though it has seen better days (especially recently). My wife is in the same boat, she has a mid-90's Saturn S-Class, that also needs head gasket work. We are keeping it going thru a combo of oil/coolant additives and minimal usage. We mostly use our 2011 Ford Escape as our main vehicle (and it needed a butt-load of work last year, less than a year after we got it!) Fortunately we both live close to our jobs, so commuting is not too much of an issue, but my folks live over an hour away, and if I want to do anything with them, it has to be with the Escape.
Good luck.
I had a very similar situation last year. I'm afraid I'm in no position to offer advice - there's nothing I can think of that would actually help - but I can offer sympathy. Car trouble is the pits.
4841963
Kinda depends on the car. Most of the tools that we've got are designed to either yank the engine out the top or drop it out the bottom; I'm honestly not sure how that would work on a Previa. Not really sure how you get to the attachment points or where you'd hold the engine from.
I do suspect that once you've got the peripherals off the engine, though, it probably does come out of the Previa pretty easily.
Ordinarily, owning a Toyota means repair parts are easy to find, even from the manufacturer. Owning a Previa, though....
I used to work for a Toyota dealer. The Previa is a fairly rare beast. As for the mileage, I've seen them well north of 500k on a regular basis. I once saw one closing in on 1M, but it had been severely neglected and was on its last legs.
*Burning incense and saying a prayer for the health of your replacement cylinder head. *
4842260
Toyota dealers actually have a specialized jack designed specifically for removing the engines from Previas. I gets plenty of use under rear drive cars getting transmission removal/reinstall work done.
4842277
That doesn't surprise me.
We're a general repair shop and don't have all those specialty tools, so there's a lot of improvisation that goes into one-offs like that. If it's something we see a lot of, we'll buy the tools for it.
4841955
Appropriately, Previa makes it sound like a drug all by itself, albeit more in the "Ask your doctor about" market than in the "first taste is always free" market. But if it works after this, great.
We've got a friend whose car is out of commission, but who has to do some grocery shopping. My mother plans to take her. I'm staying at home because our pickup is not built for multiple adult passengers -- we've never had call to transport them, but two or three children probably could sit in the back, if the situation deemed it necessary -- and before anyone suggests it, no, I do not plan on sitting in the truck bed. I plan to stay home and enjoy being the only one there for a little while, while hoping for the usual outcome of her safe return.
4841957
Have seen Previas in the workshop here in South Aust. Aust Toyota plates, not independent imports.
Also it is definitely getting dropped underneath, no hole in floor big enough to lift it through upwards.
http://www.toyotavantech.com/forum/showthread.php?1303-A-twist-on-Previa-engine-removal
Anyone else think the Previa could make a good rocket model if they removed the wheels? It's got a pretty neat shape in the front, very triangular.
Really, good luck with all this car trouble. Wish I could be actually helpful but all I could do is help you emotionally abuse it with swearing. Dunno if that helps really.
Been late to all the blogs this week. I'm slipping up.